Renewing Your Mind is a radio production of Ligonier Ministries. The purpose of Ligonier Ministries is to awaken as many people as possible to the holiness of God by proclaiming, teaching, and defending God's holiness in all its fullness. In order to fulfill that mission, Ligonier Ministries has been producing Christian education materials designed to fill the gap between Sunday school and seminary. For more than 35 years we've been accomplishing this mission in many ways. The Renewing Your Mind broadcast is one of those ways. To find out more about Ligonier Ministries and how you can help us fulfill this mission, give us a call at 1-800-435-4343. Again, that's 1-800-435-4343. A resource consultant is waiting for your call. How did the disciples really know that Jesus was from the Father? Stay tuned, Renewing Your Mind, Weekend Edition is next. Welcome to this weekend edition of Renewing Your Mind with author and teacher Dr. R.C. Sproul. Dr. Sproul is also the Senior Minister of Preaching and Teaching at St. Andrews, a Reformed congregation in Sanford, Florida. For approximately three and a half years, the disciples followed Jesus everywhere during His earthly ministry. They were there when He turned water into wine, when He walked on water, and when He raised Lazarus from the dead. Yet, doubt remained. What more could Jesus do to convince them that He was sent by the Father? Today on Renewing Your Mind, as we continue our study of the Gospel of John, Dr. Sproul will bring us back to the farewell discourse to remind us of how Jesus fulfilled His Word and why we can have full confidence in it. Here now is Dr. Sproul with today's message, The Legacy. This morning we'll continue with our study of the Gospel according to St. John. Chapter 14, I'm going to begin this morning at verse 18 and read through the end of the chapter. Hear then the word of God. I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you. A little while longer and the world will see me no more. But you will see me. And because I live, You will live also. And at that day, you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. He who has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. Judas, not Iscariot, said to him, Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us and not to the world? Jesus answered and said to him, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me does not keep my words, and the word which you hear is not mine, but the Father's who sent me. And these things I've spoken to you while being present with you, but the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you. Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you, not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. You've heard me say to you, I'm going away and coming back to you. And if you loved me, you would rejoice because I said, I am going to the Father for my Father is greater than I. And now I have told you before it comes that when it does come to pass, you may believe. I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in me. But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave me commandment, so I do. Arise, let us go from here. He who has ears to hear the Word of God, let them hear it. You may be seated. I did not prepare a special sermon this morning for Mother's Day. I normally don't. But anyone who has a mother, and that includes all of us, and anyone who's lost a mother can relate to Jesus' poignant promise to His disciples when he said, I won't leave you orphans. You understand that to lose one parent, according to the ancient concept of orphanhood, renders a person an orphan. Sometimes we think you're not orphaned unless or until you lose both parents. But to lose one, qualifies you to be an orphan. On Easter Sunday, I mentioned to you in passing a personal anecdote that my great desire in heaven would be to be reunited with my father, who died when I was 17. And, you know, you never get over that because yesterday I was maudlin about it because yesterday marked his 100th birthday. And I thought, isn't that something, that my dad would have been 100 years old yesterday had he lived? Well, he is 100 years old because he still is alive, and so I take great joy in that. But I felt the pangs as a teenage boy of orphanhood. of losing the strength and the guide. My mother died just a few years later, and even though I was in my 20s and was a grown man, as it were, when my second parent died, I really felt the pangs of being alone in the world. There was no one I could go to in times of need for counsel, for comfort, for support. And this is the image that Jesus uses when he talks about his departure that is at hand to his disciples. He says, I'm not going to leave you in that condition. I'm not going to leave you without support, without counsel. But notice what he appends to this statement, I will not leave you orphans. He says, but I will come to you. Now, here's one of those portions in this text that could take us to the next six months just alone, because it's a little bit ambiguous here as to what Jesus means when He says, I will come to you. Since this statement is bracketed by all of this discussion about sending the Holy Spirit to come in his place as his representative, we could think automatically that what he's referring to here is Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit will come upon his church and be the presence of Christ for the people of God. This was the promise that Jesus would make. He said, I'm going away where I'm going, you can't come, but lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. And so, he has promised, by virtue of the sending of his Holy Spirit, to be present with us. And the Catechism says, touching Jesus' human nature, he's no longer present with us. Touching his divine nature, He's never absent from us. And there's a sense in which we need to cultivate a dependence upon this promise so that when we come to gather for worship on Sunday morning, we come with the full assurance that He's here, that we're in His presence, and we are hearing His word. which he comments on later in this discussion. And so it may be that when Jesus says, I will come to you, he's referring here to Pentecost, when the Spirit descends. Another alternative that many commentators suggest is that he's referring to his final coming at the end of the age, when he will return to gather his church. That's the least likely of the alternatives in this immediate context, I think, that our Lord is addressing. But another alternative that many believe Jesus is referring to here is His resurrection. I'm leaving you, and I'm leaving you tomorrow, and you're going to feel like orphans, but I will come to you. on two occasions in the New Testament descriptions of the resurrection appearances of Jesus to his disciples. The phraseology is used of Jesus coming to them. That when he appeared from the grave, he did not go to downtown Jerusalem and manifest himself miraculously to all of the pagans in the community, but he concentrated his presence and appearance to his disciples, to his followers. Perhaps that's what our Lord was referring to. I don't know. But the promise is there when he said, I will come to you. A little while longer, the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Again, that reinforces the idea of a visible appearance of Jesus. You will see me because I live. you will live also." Again, the words link his promise to the resurrection. And at that day, you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you, on that day, the day that he comes to them. Pentecost, perhaps? I think not. I think resurrection. when the disciples see Him coming in His resurrected glory out of that tomb, then they know all doubts are removed. Now they know that He is the one who has been sent by the Father, as He has claimed all along. Fast forward to Athens, to Paul at the Areopagus, standing there debating with the philosophers on that occasion. and where he said to them that God has commanded all men everywhere to repent and come to Christ because he has appointed a day on which he will judge the whole world by that man whom God has shown and has proven to be his appointed judge. How did he do that? Through the resurrection. He who has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me, and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him." Jesus is saying, if you love me, you will obey me. This is the second time in this discourse he's saying that. And if you show obedience to me, if you really are my disciple, if you really will follow me, then I will speak to my Father in your behalf. Remember, this is the mission of Christ. He is sent by the Father to us who have been estranged from the Father, and Christ comes to reconcile us with the Father. And he said, if you love me, I will speak to the Father, and I will see to it that you are included in my Father's house." Judas then said to him, Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, but not to the world? If you notice closely what Jesus says here, he doesn't really answer this question. He says that Jesus answered, and here's what he said. He said, if you love me, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word. Now there's a little shift here in language. First he's saying, if you love him, you obey him. If you love him, you keep his commandments. Now he changes it subtly, but it's so important here. If you love Jesus, you will keep his word. I don't know how many people I've talked to in my academic life who debate the authority of the scriptures. who many people have come to me and say, well, I don't believe the Bible is the Word of God, but I love Jesus. I try to be polite when somebody says that to me. But what I'm thinking is, you're just kidding yourself about loving Jesus. Because you can't love Jesus and not love His Word. You know, if every sermon I give on Sunday morning is completely boring to you, you know, too bad. The one thing that should never bore you is the reading of the Word. You can discount what I say to a certain degree, but you can't discount what the Word says. And I've been in churches many, many times where I got anything but the Word of God from the pulpit, but at least I heard it when the text was read. And there is this inseparable relationship between your affection for Christ and your affection for the Scripture. I was engaged with a faculty, a theological seminary faculty in the West Coast many, many years ago over the doctrine of Scripture, and the dean of that institution said to me, R.C., what are you so exercised about over the authority of the Bible? What difference does it make to you? I said, are you kidding me? Take away the Word. You take away my life. I have nothing left. Because this is the Word of God. This is the Word of Christ. And if you take away the Word, you take Him away. If anyone loves me, he will keep my Word. Not only that, my Father will love him. It's like Jesus saying, love me, love my word. And if you love me and you love my word, then my father's gonna love you because he loves me and he loves the word. And we will come to him, that is my father and I, and make our home with him. But he who does not love me does not keep my words. And the word which you hear is not mine, but the father's who sent me. Again and again he relates that. And now he changes here for a minute and he says, these things, I've spoken to you while being present with you. But the helper, the counselor, the paraclete, the advocate we've looked at, the father will send him in my name and he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all the things that I said to you. Now remember, Jesus was a rabbi. and that the word disciple means student or learning. And when he chose those disciples, he said to them, follow me. And he meant that literally. He was a peripatetic teacher like Aristotle. He walked around and while he walked down the street, he would give his lectures. And the students were not recording them on cassettes or on their computers. They were putting them in their minds. That's why Jesus spoke so frequently in parables and short, pithy aphorisms that would be easy to remember, so that the words of our Lord were then to be memorized by His students. But even the best students wouldn't be able to memorize everything that Jesus said during His lifetime. Can you imagine going to a final exam, Jesus is your teacher, and he says to you, what did I say that afternoon about such and such? And you say, I forget. Just slipped my mind. Well, humanly speaking, we do forget. We let things slip through our fingers. But Jesus said, I'm going to take care of that. that one of the first tasks that the Holy Spirit is going to take care of when He comes is to bring all of these things to your remembrance. Again, that's part of the reason we have so much confidence in the accuracy of the gospel record. that it didn't rest simply on the fleshy ability of these disciples to recall perfectly what Jesus had taught them, but rather their record was superintended by the Holy Ghost himself, the Spirit of truth whom Jesus sends to represent him and his word. Then he concludes with his legacy. His last will and testament. The only thing that we know that He owned, as far as we can tell, was His robe, and that was taken by the soldiers at the foot of the cross who gambled for Christ's only earthly possession. He didn't have an IRA, a trust fund. real estate to pass on to His disciples. But nevertheless, He's leaving now, and He bequeaths to His disciples His last will and testament. We've gone over this before. We can't go over it too often. When our Lord says, here's my last will and testament, peace, I leave with you. What kind of peace? My peace I give unto you. Not as the world gives. Give I unto you. Anybody who wouldn't exchange the richest inheritance that this world can give for the legacy of Christ would be out of their minds, because you can't put a price tag on the peace of Christ. And it's only fitting that his last will and testimony would be his peace. He's the Prince of Peace. When we go to the epistles, when we read about the great drama of the gospel itself and of our justification by faith alone, and after Paul expands on that in the fifth chapter of Romans, he begins that chapter by articulating for us the very first fruit, the very first consequence of being justified. What is it? Being justified, therefore, we have. peace with God. Do you realize that people who are not in Christ are at war with God, estranged from God, in a state of enmity with God? O sinner, if that describes your condition this morning, You are in the most perilous situation any human being could ever be. And I would urge you with every ounce of strength in my body to flee to the cross that you might have peace with God. That your name might be in this last will and testament. That you will know that when Christ ends the hostility, when Christ gives Himself in your behalf and in my behalf, He takes upon Himself the just wrath of the Father against me and against you, so that you will taste not His judgment, but His peace. You're listening to Renewing Your Mind, Weekend Edition, with R.C. Sproul, reminding us why we can have full confidence in Jesus' Word. What do you believe in? Whatever it is, that's your religion. Religion shapes your loves, ideals, behavior, and goals. But unless you've thought about it clearly, your religion may not be worth believing. In today's culture, religion is making resurgence with young people, looking for meaning and purpose in their lives. Perhaps you know someone who fits this description. To help young people think through the critical issues, we're offering a five-part CD series entitled, Choosing My Religion. In this series, Dr. Sproul helps a new generation of young people arrive at sound answers to life's big questions. Today, we're offering the five-part CD series, Choosing My Religion, for a donation of any amount. If you'd like to get a copy for yourself or someone you know, call now. Our toll-free number is 1-800-435-4343. Again, that's 1-800-435-4343. 435-4343. Or you can go online to rymoffer.com. That's R-Y-M as in Renew In Your Mind and the word offer.com. That web address is for this week's special offer only. In the Choosing My Religion series, Dr. Sproul addresses the promises that relativism and rebellion make, but cannot keep. By exposing false philosophies, he leads the youth of today to the truths of the gospel. Again, the five-part CD series, Choosing My Religion, is available for a gift of any amount today. To take advantage of this special offer, call our toll-free number, 1-800-435-4343. Again, that's 800-435-4343. 435-4343. Or you can go online to rymoffer.com. That's R-Y-M as in renewing your mind, and the word offer.com. That will wrap up this Weekend Edition of Renewing Your Mind. Thank you for listening. Join us again next weekend as Dr. Sproul continues to take us through the Gospel of John. Until then, you can keep up with us at our Facebook page at facebook.com slash Ligonier. You're listening to Renewing Your Mind Weekend Edition, the listener-supported radio outreach of Ligonier Ministries in Orlando, Florida. you